Modern Adult: Finding romance in everyday life

Natasha Lunn finds romance in quiet acts of kindness

Every morning at 6:20am, when the light is dark and our street is empty, I pull myself out of bed and stand at the bedroom window.

I don’t have to be up for another hour and a half but I go to the window to wave goodbye to my boyfriend, who leaves for work long before I do.

When I stand there half asleep, squinting like a mole in the light through the gap in our stripy Ikea curtains, I wonder when this small but significant ritual first began.

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I’m not a morning person. And sometimes it’s freezing cold and sometimes I have period pain and sometimes I’m annoyed because my boyfriend has - yet again - moved the plastic bags from the drawer I want to keep them in to the drawer he wants to keep them in.

But the thing is, I always go to the window and he always looks back. And I’ve come to realise that this familiar routine means much more to me than I ever thought it would.

There is a line in Grey’s Anatomy when a doctor with very nice hair says to the woman he loves: “From now on, you can expect that I’m going to show up. Even if I yell, even if you yell, I’m always going to show up.”

I suppose that’s what I’m doing at the window every morning – showing up. I show up when I’m cold. I show up when I’m depressed or angry or scared. I even show up when I’m feeling insecure and it would be easier to pretend not to care.

Why? Because I've learnt that true love swings on the hinges of small acts of kindness.

In an Atlantic article about The Science of Happily Ever After Red contributor Emily Esfahani Smith discovered how kindness glues couples together. She writes: “There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise.”

People in successful relationships “tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work.”

Today, on a day when we’re told that love looks like surprise Net a Porter packages and expensive-but-thoughtful restaurant bookings, “sustained hard work” sounds like an unappealing prospect (one you’d struggle to find a Scribbler card with a fruit-related pun for).

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In the past I’d always assumed the “hard work” was finding someone you wanted to build a life with. I never thought about the work that begins when you find that person, after the initial flush of love, after you’ve ticked off all the firsts – the first kiss, the first “I love you”, the first glass of prosecco together in your new home.

When I first moved in with my boyfriend, I’ll admit, I was worried all the romance would leak out of our relationship. I didn’t yet know that the most romantic moments of all would be hiding in very mundane acts of kindness, like when someone brings you back a packet of mini eggs from the newsagent or puts a cold flannel on your forehead when you have a migraine.

Or when you have period pain and they fetch you paracetamol from the kitchen drawer at 3am; when they politely smile as your dad tells the same story for the fourth time; when they hold your hand in the middle of the night for no reason when you’re both half asleep.

Our deputy editor, Sarah, says her husband puts toothpaste on her toothbrush for her so when she gets to the bathroom it’s waiting for her on the side of the sink. Cyan, our features writer, tells me her boyfriend makes her a hot Ribena before they go to bed.

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Despite the versions of love we're tempted to buy into on Valentine’s Day, this is what real love looks like: a packet of mini eggs; a toothbrush with toothpaste on; a hot mug of Ribena; a woman standing at the window in the freezing cold at 6:20am for no other reason than to wave.

If I am lucky enough to have a son or daughter, I will teach them to be on the lookout for this version of love: the one that creeps and grows, that is slow and quiet, like the verse in a Neil Young song that you eventually realise is so much better than the chorus.

It’s easy to be kind once a year; it’s far harder to be kind every day, for a lifetime - but I would urge you to try. I'm still trying, too.

I've been in relationships where I could have been kinder and I've also spent time with men who were not always kind to me. It takes courage to practice using kindness and to believe that you deserve it too.

The more you exercise that muscle, though - especially when you don’t want to - the more romance you will find in unexpected places. This type of love, the I’m-always-going-to-show-up love, it isn’t on cards or mugs or even in the best songs – so we have to look harder for it. Like all the best things in life, we have to work on it, day by day, one kind act at a time.

The first morning I stood at the window my boyfriend and I had only lived together for one week. Everything was new and romantic, so much untrodden ground. I thought, This is the morning I’ll remember forever. But actually, the morning I treasure the most isn’t that one.

It was a few months later, the morning after we’d had a fight – not a blazing one, but one that had nonetheless put us out of sync. And still, I went to the window. And still, he looked back.

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He waved and I waved and I had never felt so in love. Not a red rose in sight.

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